LE or D3?

[21's bitch]

First of all sorry if it's kind of a weird question, i'm a new ARPG player.

I started playing PoE in July and have racked up like 300h on it maybe? Tho at this point i've noticed it's not a casual player friendly game, even with my ammount of hours i barely know what i'm doing and don't feel independent at all, it's really frustrating and not satisfying.

I'm looking for something casual, i don't enjoy playing games for 8h straight, i like sitting down and having some fun, but not for too long. Which of the two lets me do that, better and for the most time?

I have tried the D3 demo and it felt "meh" i guess, but it's an old game with years of development, currently for 30€ (the eternal version with both DLC), which is the same price as LE, which is in early access and is nowhere close to finished (from what i've read and seen).

Should i buy LE or D3? Or should i keep my money and push forward on PoE?

[me gusta MMR drop]

I'm a long time player of D3 (since before RoS) and PoE player from even before that :)

In Last Epoch you have pretty much all of the game mechanics that are in D3, but developed a bit more and in a better way.
- skill runes: skill specializations (trees), which is better
- crafting and reforging: yes, but better and more goal-oriented and consistent in LE
- rifts: Monolith and Arena, again, better
- gambling, crafting materials, loot with affixes, etc: also here

The only thing that Last Epoch lacks is a well-defined description of the abilities, specifically the stats of minions and/or damage numbers, but you'll work that out eventually. Like: how strong is the +5 damage for minions??? No idea what their base damage is anyway :)

There are also many things that are going to come in LE in the future, e.g. the Bazaar, while in D3 you can't really expect the auction house to make a comeback.


Compared to PoE, Last Epoch feels much more satisfying to build a character, because you can actually keep changing and experimenting without having to throw away all your equipment and respec the entire tree. While in PoE the game revolves pretty much around one single max-stacked skill with alt quality/awakened gems etc. that you'll use 99% of the time. Also the pressure to complete the heist or delve or lab or whatever league event in a hurry - it is just not present in Last Epoch, where you actually have a moment to take a breath if you so wish, without something blowing your head off.

Also, in PoE there comes a moment in each league where you progress so far that pretty much you start being oneshot every other minute or so. The difficulty in PoE is just artificial and based on bug numbers - spells or on-death effects that will blow you away (e.g. Delirium), no matter what you have under the belt. In Last Epoch, such nonsense is avoided thankfully.

The only downside to LE compared to PoE talents (passives) is that in LE you will eventually have to choose a specialization for your character, however it is not so limiting, and it is more of a playstyle-choice rather than just cutting half of the tree "because so". If you have a rough idea of what you prefer to play, however, you won't even notice that you're actually limited for some talents, because they won't really be relevant for your build. And there is much to tailor and adjust anyway, even with specialization limitations.


All in all Last Epoch is currently much better that D3, and despite it even feels like playing Reaper of Souls at times if you consider the world and map style :) And certainly LE has much more potential in the future.

[21's bitch]

Originally posted by me gusta MMR drop:

I'm a long time player of D3 (since before RoS) and PoE player from even before that :)

In Last Epoch you have pretty much all of the game mechanics that are in D3, but developed a bit more and in a better way.
- skill runes: skill specializations (trees), which is better
- crafting and reforging: yes, but better and more goal-oriented and consistent in LE
- rifts: Monolith and Arena, again, better
- gambling, crafting materials, loot with affixes, etc: also here

The only thing that Last Epoch lacks is a well-defined description of the abilities, specifically the stats of minions and/or damage numbers, but you'll work that out eventually. Like: how strong is the +5 damage for minions??? No idea what their base damage is anyway :)

There are also many things that are going to come in LE in the future, e.g. the Bazaar, while in D3 you can't really expect the auction house to make a comeback.


Compared to PoE, Last Epoch feels much more satisfying to build a character, because you can actually keep changing and experimenting without having to throw away all your equipment and respec the entire tree. While in PoE the game revolves pretty much around one single max-stacked skill with alt quality/awakened gems etc. that you'll use 99% of the time. Also the pressure to complete the heist or delve or lab or whatever league event in a hurry - it is just not present in Last Epoch, where you actually have a moment to take a breath if you so wish, without something blowing your head off.

Also, in PoE there comes a moment in each league where you progress so far that pretty much you start being oneshot every other minute or so. The difficulty in PoE is just artificial and based on bug numbers - spells or on-death effects that will blow you away (e.g. Delirium), no matter what you have under the belt. In Last Epoch, such nonsense is avoided thankfully.

The only downside to LE compared to PoE talents (passives) is that in LE you will eventually have to choose a specialization for your character, however it is not so limiting, and it is more of a playstyle-choice rather than just cutting half of the tree "because so". If you have a rough idea of what you prefer to play, however, you won't even notice that you're actually limited for some talents, because they won't really be relevant for your build. And there is much to tailor and adjust anyway, even with specialization limitations.


All in all Last Epoch is currently much better that D3, and despite it even feels like playing Reaper of Souls at times if you consider the world and map style :) And certainly LE has much more potential in the future.

Thanks a lot for the long and detailed answer!

It seems D3 is out of the question, from what many people have told me, it is very underwhelming even for a new player to the genre like me.

I might just buy LE tomorrow and try it out for the 2 hours (steam refund policy) and then decide, the problem is, i'll only be experiencing the very early gameplay and almost no feel as to what the game really is.

Could you please tell me more about your experience with its endgame?

Also, is gearing up in the endgame difficult and complex like in PoE, or is it easier and new player friendly, for example, is the crafting something that is well made in this game (unlike in PoE imo, which i found to be very poorly done and unsatisfying, so all gear came from trading, making the endgame just a currency farming simulator)?

[Blackwall]

Long time PoE and D3 player here as well. I agree with all that's been said about PoE, it is not casual friendly and has a really grindy play loop that only becomes fun if you are overpowered.

LE has a lot to offer, which poster above has covered. It is still in development and has not officially launched, which means things will change. There's every reason to play LE, but let me throw a few reasons out as to why you might want to check out Diablo 3 as well.

Diablo 3 is built for the casual player and takes about 10 minutes to understand. You never have to read a guide. If you decide you need to up your game, there are a gazillion guides out there by very experienced players to help you. A 20 minute YT will tell you all you need to know to build out a class and do some terrific hacking and slashing.

And that is all you need to know about D3: Terrific hacking and slashing. D3's combat is unrivaled by any other action RPG. Deep class builds? Nope. Great itemization? Not really. Engaging story? Uhn, this isn't Diablo 2. Satisfying combat? Absolutely.

You can log in to Diablo 3, spend an hour whacking and smacking and advance your character. You don't need to understand a single thing about the game's mechanics beyond what you can easily discover on the character sheet. It is the polar opposite of Path of Exile.

LE sits comfortably between D3 and PoE in my opinion. It's got build depth and requires some planning and thoughtful consideration of where to put your points. Maps can be long, sometimes overly long. While it isn't a hog for synergy of skills and skill points like PoE, you can find yourself with a build that simply doesn't work. But unlike PoE, you'll be able to fix it. Not as easily as D3's quick change ups, but not as painful as PoE's passive skill tree resets.

Endgame in D3 is very straight forward: Rifts and bounties. You need bounty mats for crafting, which is really just an RNG re-roll. There is no sophisticated crafting in D3, but you still have to do it to do harder content as you level. Nonetheless, it's simple and straightforward. You need better rolled gear to do higher level Rifts to get better gear and more mats to re-roll your gear to do higher rifts. And that's basically it. And while that may sound boring, D3's combat is still the best RPG combat.

The LE campaign is long and in some places tedious. The water temple and the last act boss is simply a complete pain in the nether regions. You will die and die again and then die some more. You can cheese this boss but the very fact that this is practically speaking the only way most builds can kill him is not a recommendation.

However, once you get to the End Time (the last epoch), even if you are not level 50, you can access the Monolith of Fate, which is meant to be endgame content. Depending on your build, you can pretty much start doing this whenever you want. (I typically start doing monolith as soon as I can, skipping that unfun last part of the campaign.) The monolith opens a map with a boss fight at the end and rewards. Each map you run can be modified and some modifiers are cumulative, making the monolith maps progressively more interesting to defeat. They are essentially LE's take on D3's Greater Rifts but do not have a timer like GRs do. You progress up the 'fates' and just like D3's GR's get better gear as you do. Having played hundreds of hours of Greater Rifts in D3, LE's monolith maps are about par for this type of content.

LE's crafting is just superior to every other RPG I've played. You have far more control, get the mods you want and can effectively plan your build out. Searching for the mods you want on dropped gear and the bases to craft on makes later content worthwhile. While it has a few tweaks I'll not explain here, LE crafting boils down to base + mods + stabilizers. You can deconstruct any piece of gear to get mods. This is one of the few places where randomization comes in; you may not get all the mods off a piece of gear. Mods go into your crafting mat inventory (yes, yes, thank you devs for this!) and can easily be accessed by bringing up the crafting interface, which can be done literally anywhere in the game. No special crafting station or town access required. You pop the piece of gear you want to modify into the crafting window, sort through the mods listed below until you find the one you want and execute. Mods can crit, giving you an excellent result. But each time you craft you wear an item a bit and if you get a bad roll, you can fracture your gear, meaning you cannot mod it any further, but it is still usable. Most gear can hold 6 mods, 3 suffixes, 3 prefixes. You can therefore take a white drop and craft it up to the highest tier, if your luck holds.

I'll stop here as I see I've gone on a bit. I'll leave you with this. In terms of action RPGs, I would rank Diablo 3 the easiest, most accessible with bonus points for far and away best combat. The Last Epoch is next in difficulty, with better integrated passives and skills, greater control over your builds and deeper storyline, with bonus points for its exceptional crafting system. Path of Exile is both more difficult and comprehensive in builds and structure, even this many years after launch, still a work in progress. Bonus points for being the gold-standard for passive skill trees and skill synergies. Negative points for allowing the game to become bloated with overly complex systems, making it unfriendly to casual or occasional players and therefore the most difficult.

Hope you have great fun in whatever game you decide to play.

[[LWT]Karpiu]

Could never get into D3, partly because of my hurt feelings, i've been a D2 player since 2000. But talking only about mechanics in D3 : character development (so the most important thing in an ARPG) is non-existent. You basically create a shell of a character, you don't really customize it since everything is given to you by the game itself, you just slap whatever item is best for you at any given time on it and that's all your involvement in the whole character development process. I also couldn't stand the totally disconnected from Diablo's world aesthethics (some cartoon ish), and being immersed is very important for me to enjoy a game. I'm not talking about graphics advancement, more about style. The game seems to me like it's been made for console players to easily pick up, run out of the town and kill stuff. Nothing memorable about Diablo 3.

Last Epoch feels a lot more solid and less casual for me. I feel like i'm progressing with my character and i shape it up to my liking. There will also be a lot more endgame systems than Diablo 3 has. I'm pretty sure that once finished, it'll offer a lot more than Diablo 3 after almost 10 years.

[Ysi]

As much as I enjoy Last Epoch in its current state, from your post I'd recommend either PoE or D3 (or other, like Grim Dawn). LE is still early access and very rough around the edges, you'll most likely run into bugs and major performance issues a bit randomly, there's still a lot of missing/unfinished content, and balance can be a bit all over the place, also any patch could revert any progress you've made (though unlikely).

The current target audience is more ARPG veterans who want to help make the game better with feedback and testing (and financial support by buying the game and potentially support packs early).

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Blackwall:

Long time PoE and D3 player here as well. I agree with all that's been said about PoE, it is not casual friendly and has a really grindy play loop that only becomes fun if you are overpowered.

Yes it has amazing elements but it has a strange 'must follow meta build' approach more in line with a CCG, I mean sure you can do weird off piste builds but they always hit a wall cause the end game is designed around a narrow number of meta builds.

[[LWT]Karpiu]

Originally posted by Ysi:

As much as I enjoy Last Epoch in its current state, from your post I'd recommend either PoE or D3 (or other, like Grim Dawn). LE is still early access and very rough around the edges, you'll most likely run into bugs and major performance issues a bit randomly, there's still a lot of missing/unfinished content, and balance can be a bit all over the place, also any patch could revert any progress you've made (though unlikely).

The current target audience is more ARPG veterans who want to help make the game better with feedback and testing (and financial support by buying the game and potentially support packs early).

OP literally stated that PoE was overwhelming for him, even after 300 hours and you're recommending PoE ? Did you read his first post ? Last Epoch is a lot more accessible than PoE. It's a lot closer to Diablo 3 than PoE in terms of complexity and difficulty, but not as shallow, so it's a sweet spot. Grim Dawn is a lot more complex, it's probably at number 2 in terms of complexity in ARPGs, after PoE, though it's still a lot more forgiving. Also very easy to respec, unlike PoE.

That being said, Last Epoch is more of an investment. It's constantly getting updated and closer to being finished, next big patch is coming on December 4th, but it still needs time to be done. It's quite enjoyable in its current state though.

Diablo 3 is for either a total casual for mindless gaming and just breezing through the game without any thought, or people that like to grind for one specific (or a few) piece of gear to make their build work, because otherwise it won't at all. Extremely item-dependant.

[Mortiaris]

PoE is not for casuals, after 1000 hours, im still feel ♥♥♥♥ in poe, its lack of build variety, and there are TOP builds and CRAP builds evry patch. You cant just take skill and enjoy, plus if you like progress, poe is 100% ♥♥♥♥. There is many "progress blocks" like maps, you need to trade, you need to have few aplications at once, to progress somethink, crafting system is worst for casuals form all games, even this form diablo is better, after 600h i started to create some "good" items.

There is Grim Dawn where you can play and enjoy horror-post apo lore, you can do build anythink you want, and with 1000+hand made item and tausends more "green" items, you can do every build you will have in mind, plus there are challenges for no casuals. Still last difficulty can be hard for many casual people, but game is superior to any H&S if you prefer just play and enjoy solo or with friends, there is good loot, and no progress blocks. But this game IS BIGGG.

Epoch have great mechanics, and its somethink between, POE and Grim Dawn, i have really much hope for this project, classes are good, crafting is best in any h&S, i really love monolith compared to poe maps. Im not sure they micro system, becuse if this will be POE mictro system look progress in game will suck, and when devs become corpo they will focus only on it, like POE doing now. For casuals Epoch looks ok, i progressing even when i have no time, and i can comeback after few months to keep playing it, its not possible in POE, becuse they can easy ♥♥♥♥ your passive three or you will simply forget how your character works.

D3 is half brain easy mode, its not casual its ultra casual, this is first game where i have 10 full geared harcore characters, and im only dieing to lags. But if you want somethink compared or friendly casual mode epoch is ok, still game is in beta, sometimes you will have to respec your character. Core game is well done, so you can have many fun hours, its price worth.

I think Epoch and GD are best buy now.

[carrion]

D3>POE>LE>GD
imo

[RodHull]

Originally posted by carrion:

D3>POE>LE>GD
imo

Reverse the list and we can talk

[[LWT]Karpiu]

Originally posted by carrion:

D3>POE>LE>GD
imo

Totally reversed looks fine, but how someone can put D3 above any other good ARPG is beyond me. Glad you have fun though, are you playing on a controller by any chance ?

[kassandra]

Last Epoch is the best thing since D2 imho, but whatever your ARPG of choice will be: avoid D3.

[Dreadmoon "Nescera"]

GD->PoE->LE------------------------------------------------> D3,

i played 1500hours GD,
10k hours PoE
600hours LE
3k hours D3,

and for me the cap between LE and D3 is huge, sure the beginning with D3 is easy and rly beginner friendly compare with the other games, Story/Lore wise is D3/Grim dawn another level, but endgame wise is D3 not good, after you complete the story or reach max level you can play 10hours-maybe 15hours and you are full geared, now you can min max your char "same uniques just better/higher stats" sure you can invest another 100-200hours in this char and you are completly full maxed, but this isnt rly funny, you farm the same item over and over, reroll stats over and over until you hit your min maxed perfect items. your invest/progress is extremly low, and makes a tiny difference

[Sir Didymus]

Just LE, so Lizzard doesn't get any money. Ain't what it was years ago sadly

[Moreth9]

Originally posted by RodHull:

Originally posted by carrion:

D3>POE>LE>GD
imo

Reverse the list and we can talk

Haven't played LE but I already agree, reverse the list.